Lawmakers postpone Cook County property tax debt sale to continue
working on reforms
[February 27, 2026]
By Jenna Schweikert and UIS Public Affairs Reporting (PAR)
Nearly three years after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on selling property
tax debt, Illinois legislators continue to delay reforms to bring the
state into compliance with the decision.
Lawmakers voted to pass House Bill 598 on Thursday, which would delay
the annual Cook County property tax debt sale from March 10 to Dec. 1,
2026, and pause accruing interest on the debt.
However, the delay leaves county treasurers open to a growing number of
lawsuits that could put them on the hook for millions of dollars in
damages.
State law assigns different annual sale dates in Cook County to the rest
of the state, so the county and lawmakers needed to delay this
particular sale to address the larger issue.
“The Senate has already voted on provisions of this bill several times,”
Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, the bill’s lead Senate sponsor, said
on the Senate floor Thursday.
“We’re just trying to get it home in order to give us some more time to
try to address the larger issue that was determined during the Tyler v.
Hennepin (County) decision and to try to do it right and make sure that
we’re keeping people in their homes,” Villaneuva added.
HB598 next goes to the governor’s desk
Tyler v. Hennepin County
In the 2023 Tyler v. Hennepin County decision, the Supreme Court
unanimously ruled that local and state governments cannot seize and sell
the homes of people with unpaid property tax debt without returning the
value left after the debt is settled.
Every state but Illinois has corrected their state law in accordance
with the ruling.
To comply with the ruling, the state must require that homeowners
receive the leftover funds from a sale after their debt has been
settled.
Before the Tyler decision, county treasurers could hold annual sales of
unpaid property tax debt to private investors. If the homeowners fell
behind on paying back their debt, the investors could then seize and
sell the property, pocketing the difference with no refund to the
homeowner.
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State Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, on the House floor in May
2025. (Capitol News Illinois file photo)
As a result of the seizure, homeowners would lose the entire value of
their home, which is often much more than the size of their debt. The
tax sales help local governments continue to fund their everyday
operations, but critics say it also leaves homeowners vulnerable to
predatory tax buyers.
Some groups would take advantage of a loophole in the law called
sale-in-error that allowed them to receive a refund on a sale if there
was an error in the sale documents, like miscalculated square footage.
That loophole has since been closed after a report from Cook County
Treasurer Maria Pappas, but the state still needs to enact further
reforms to the sale process to comply with the Tyler ruling.
“This isn’t a new issue, we’ve been working on it for years,” Villanueva
said in a statement. “We cannot continue to let this issue fall by the
wayside while families — especially seniors and working-class homeowners
— remain at risk of losing not just their homes, but the equity they
worked their entire lives to build.”
Legislators have introduced some reform bills, like House Bill 3146 and
Villanueva’s Senate Bill 3940, but face resistance from the groups who
buy tax debts.
Neither bill has passed out of committee, signaling that the legislation
is still a way off from becoming law.
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coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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